Shari + the Plant-Based Project

We are nine days away from Christmas Day and my Christmas break has officially started. We had our work Christmas party last night and it was a lot of fun. I don’t often get a chance to chat with everyone outside of the office walls, so it was nice to have that time with some of them.

When dinner was served, I was a little underwhelmed to say the least. The food was buffet style, which was fine, but out of all the food available to everyone, there were only two dishes that were vegan and they were both cold after plating. My first thought was I can’t believe I drove 2 hours to get here for this! Anyway, I sat down with my roasted root vegetables and my mixed greens salad and dove in. I was almost finished eating when our Director of Marketing came over to me with a waiter and pointed in my direction to tell the waiter that I was the only vegan order and that I could order my meal off the menu. That was my plan anyway. I had already reviewed the menu and decided that I would pay for my own dinner if I had to, but I needed to eat and I needed to feel satisfied. Nonetheless, the DoM saved the day and I had a wonderful meal in front of me before long.

Today I was thinking about my night out and the overall experience and it got me to thinking about food and how after 15 years of being vegan, I still have so much to learn about plant-based meal prep and cooking.

This afternoon, I sat down to watch a movie on Netflix and I finally decided to watch Julie & Julia, a movie based on true stories about Julia Child, a phenomenal cook and author of cookbooks from back in the early 1960s. I really enjoyed the movie because it paralleled two true life stories, one from Julia Child’s timeline back in the 1960s and another modern day story of a want-to-be writer who dove into blogging back in the early 2000s. Both stories were fascinating.

It inspired me to think about doing a similar project, but for a well-known author who has a few published plant-based books. The difference between the movie Julie + Julia and my take on this project, would be that I already “know” the author. We are friends on social media and have had some conversation about her life after her cookbook. Kim Barnouin is the successful author of the Skinny Bitch Ultimate Everyday Cookbook. This cookbook has 166 recipes and I am excited to try them all.

My next project will be to make every single one of the recipes in this cookbook and review them to you my audience. I’m no food critic, but I am open to trying new foods in the plant-based world. I will make them and share photos of each recipe with you over the course of the next 365 days. As I mentioned earlier, I have so much to learn and I want to take that next step.

I want to add that I am not affiliated with Kim Barnouin or her cookbook. I am not going to earn any income from sharing these recipes or linking her books here. I am just a curious vegan who is open to learning more about plant-based foods. I hope you will stay on this journey with me as I embark on this fun project: Shari + the Plant-based Project.